Tara Brach - Meditation: Receiving Life with an Open Awareness (2018-01-17)

Episode Date: January 18, 2018

Meditation: Receiving Life with an Open Awareness (2018-01-17) - We begin with listening and then bring a receptive attention to experience the life of the body. We then open the attention to the whole field of sensations and sound, and rest in the openness and presence that includes all the changing currents of experience. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. As you close your eyes, you might feel from the inside out your sitting posture and make the small adjustments that help you to feel that you're sitting in a way that's upright so you can feel alert, sitting tall, and also at ease, balanced, centered. Feeling this body breathing, you might gently bring the attention to the area of the heart.

We're going to reflect for a moment and the inquiry is, what is your most sincere intention for a practice, for meditation practice, for being here right now? what is it that really matters to your heart? And sensing a collective intention that as we wake up, as we become more present, that ripples out in a way to serve beings everywhere. In the stillness you might be aware of listening to sound. It's an open, receptive listening. You're listening not just with your ears, but your whole awareness.

listening to the space in the room, listening to the most distant sounds you can detect open, receptive presence. It's with the same quality of listening that you can listen to and feel the aliveness inside the body. Just receiving sensations. You might bring the attention to the brow and relax a little there, soften the eyes, Let the brow be smooth and listening to and feeling the aliveness that's there do you notice a tingling or vibrating perhaps a fluttering at the lids

light and dark open and receptive you might bring a slight smile to the mouth and feel the inside of the mouth smiling relaxing the tongue see if you can relax right to the root of the tongue And with that receptive, listening to and feeling the life that's here, experiencing the life inside the mouth, what's the dance of aliveness like there?

Bowing the shoulder just to relax back and down a bit. Sometimes it helps to imagine the inside of the shoulders ice melting to water and then water to gas. and then bringing that same receptivity, receiving the sensations inside the shoulders with awareness. You're letting life be just as it is, allowing it to float, to move, to untangle in the space of awareness, allowing the hands to rest in a very easy and effortless way, maybe softening the the hands a bit. When you feel from the inside out, what's it like? What's it like to just receive the aliveness inside the hands, allowing an openness to the chest? And you might sense that you're smiling into the heart, visualizing and sensing that smile spreading through the heart

and chest. Not to paper over, but to really make space for what's right here. From the inside out, listening to and feeling the dance of life that's in the heart area, loosening the belly, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again, letting the awareness fill the belly, noticing what happens when you listen to and feel the life inside the belly, what's it like? In the same way, relaxing down through the pelvic region, so it's filled with awareness.

And again, noticing what's it like to listen to and feel the aliveness that's here. Feeling the legs and filling the legs with awareness, so you can sense the length and the volume and the weight of the legs, right down into the feet. feeling the feet from the inside out, receptive to the life that's there, and expanding the lens of attention so that you can feel simultaneously the whole dance of aliveness. This body is a field of sensation.

Not stopping or opposing anything. Just letting this whole river of aliveness live through you. perceptive, open, again aware of the play of sound, letting sounds wash through, resting and open awareness, listening to and feeling the whole changing dance of experience, sounds, sensations, feelings in the foreground and in the background that alert presence, the stillness, openness that includes everything that's happening. The mind contracts into thoughts. When there's a noticing of that,

relax back, resting in this openness and wakefulness that's listening to and feeling the changing river of experience. Noticing if there's a veil of thinking between you and open presence. And if you sense that tranceiness, just relax open again, listening to sound, receptive,

opening, relaxing a bit through the body. You might ask what might want to let go a little bit right now, what might want to relax. And again, listening to and feeling the moment to moment experience, resting as open awareness including these currents of life that move through us.